


sommer sturm und drang

by Anonymous



Category: Vinland Saga (Manga)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Brother/Brother Incest, Durmstrang, M/M, Omegaverse Typical Dubcon, Psychological Horror, Sibling Incest, aged 16/17, as consensual as possible b/t the two of them, but - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23570638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: 🧙A/🧙Ω
Relationships: Torgrim/Atli (Vinland Saga)
Kudos: 6
Collections: Anonymous





	sommer sturm und drang

**Author's Note:**

> I'm both very sorry, and not. @vincestsaga on twitter

It's Atli's brother who sends him into his first heat, at the age of sixteen. There are two problems with that already, and the third problem is the method.

Durmstrang's got a lot of space to be a teenage boy, and plenty of time for it, too, if you aren't overly worried about your end-of-year scores. Being satisfied with the same 2s he's been getting all his life frees up a lot of room for Atli to pal around outside, with the same boys he's been with since he came to school.

Most of all his brother, who he's been with forever, except for that one awful year where Torgrim was here without him and kept forgetting to write him. Their parents don't like wasting Floo powder, so Atli was stuck waiting for their ugly old owl to show up with a letter in its beak. Halfway through the year it started flying back home whether it'd been given a reply letter or not, and it was only next year that Atli discovered Torgrim also forgets to visit the owlery at feeding time. He does take the letters and read them, but they usually end up underneath his goblet by the time breakfast's over.

"Of course I think about you," was all his brother had to say. "The whole time I'm reading the letter. I know what I _would_ say back. It's just I have to think everything over again when I write back, and it doesn't come out right."

That doesn't matter now, though. They've been taking all the classes together they can, and sneaking in to see each other after hours. Usually that's Atli in the older boys' dorm. He's friends with the other boys his brother's age, and he knows Torgrim's pleased he can hold his own.

They end up alone sometimes, too. Lots of wide open spaces here. And more out-of-the-way corners than you'd expect, even on the insides. They live among Muggles back home, and their house feels it. The _magic_ here nearly knocked Atli flat his first week. Which Torgrim thought was very funny, while he was introducing all his friends to his glassy-eyed little brother.

"He talks more usually," was what he said. "He's adjusting. This time next week you'll be begging him to shut up."

Their friends are a long way off at the moment. That's how it feels, anyway. All the Alphas, boy and girl, like having a spot or two on the grounds to call their own, and Torgrim's is a hollowed out spot that must've been a house, once. It's sort of squared off and you can dip down into it and hide under the crest of earth that rises between it and the castle. Other Alphas must have chosen this place over the years, and there are scars in the earth where they've gone digging. Grasses have grown over all the scars, leaving no record of what those other students found. Ancient plates or flasks, or maybe something that left an empty bed in the castle that night.

Atli's never felt any urge to go digging. They just hang out, usually, talking or doing a few minutes of homework that absolutely can't be skipped. Sometimes they light firecrackers or try to turn birds into things. At some point in his third year, Torgrim started transfiguring bottles of Steinsson's Special Whiskey into a line of rocks that edge the inside of the hollow. They're too young to be part of the scenery, like seeing a landscaping truck fill an old pit with new gravel. And he still can't make the spell last past early morning of the next day. But the groundskeepers' bats do their patrol rounds at night, and they're not too detail-minded. The two of them can both go to pubs now, and the transfiguration leaves a layer of silt at the bottom of the bottles. The row of eerily even stones is still sitting there, though, sometimes down one or two and sometimes up, whenever the two of them head back to the castle. Atli likes making the moss grow back over them. It helps the spell stick, and Torgrim says he has an eye for it.

They've been playing bloody knuckles this afternoon. It's too Muggle to show the other boys, but they learned it as kids and it can't be improved on much by magic. Except healing spells after, of course, but those are always handy for anything fun.

"Here," Torgrim says now, handing him a flask just like the one he's drinking from. "I brought two."

Atli takes it without thanking him—it's understood, with them—and takes a swig of what he's expecting to be pumpkin juice. It's a little weird to be drinking it outside in the afternoon, but his brother has funny whims sometimes. Not much stranger than the whiskey, when you get down to it.

It's not pumpkin juice.

"Urgh." Atli barely keeps himself from spitting it out. If anyone else had handed him this, he would spit, but whatever Torgrim gives him, it's not going to be poison. Some of the boys do swap poisons, as a kind of running joke, and it keeps the infirmary busy on hot days.

"You don't like it?" Torgrim wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, looking surprised and a little hurt.

Atli forces himself to swallow. It tastes like boiling water. "What the hell is it?"

"Doesn't have a name yet," Torgrim says casually. "I made it."

Atli looks at the flask. It feels very cold in his hand. "You made it?"

"In Potions. I copied my assignment and got some free time."

"I thought you were studying... love potions, and things like that."

"Yeah, Omega-soothing tonics and stuff. It's nothing like that, though. I was just thinking about how that's all based on smells, and everyone likes a different kind. It should taste like something you really like."

"Well, it didn't." Atli finds himself almost snapping. His brother has a lot of ideas, and he's been turned a lot of different colors over the years. And speaking of smells. He'd rather not think about his history with smells.

Torgrim's fond of changing things around so he can enjoy them in places he's not supposed to. He's never messed around with the actual food itself before, or Atli would've been more careful. He thinks about all the mud and pebbles he's dumped into the lake before turning the empty bottle into something that won't be discovered for a while. His transfigurations last quite a while now, but his magic can't handle the contents like his brother's can. When he tries to turn one of the stones back, he gets a glass sphere wrapped around a smaller stone. And whatever he turns one of the used bottles into, it'll be full of mud if he doesn't empty it first.

"No need to go losing our temper, is there? It tastes fine to me. It must not change between people." Torgrim looks down regretfully at his flask. "I brewed so much I had trouble sneaking it out. Guess I can't sell it, if it only tastes good to me. Shit, what a waste. What the hell are you doing?"

"I dunno." Atli finds himself on his knees, with no clear idea what he wants to do down here. Standing up feels impossible. The thought of it makes his head spin. "You're sure the taste was the only thing?"

"That was the whole point. I just did that part like the textbook says, and I left out the rest. So it shouldn't _be_ anything. Hey, are you feeling okay?"

The alarm in his brother's voice is a little late, but it's a relief to hear. As long as he's taking this seriously he's not going to stop until Atli's taken care of.

"I think," Atli says carefully, "I might be fine. Or else I'm dying real slowly."

"I mean..." Now it's a mix of reluctance and frustration that creeps into Torgrim's voice. "All this stuff has to be brewed different for Alphas and Betas. So if you were... It might do something. If you did happen to be something else."

Atli's been fairly sure for a few years now that he's a Beta. Torgrim, though, keeps talking up the party they'll have to have when his little brother finally presents. Their friends have started clearing their throats and finding other things to talk about, when he punches Atli‘s shoulder and tells him he's going to be the latest-presenting Alpha in all of Europe. It's never been the right moment to tell Torgrim that he doesn't really mind not being an Alpha. He can act like one, and he has Alpha friends and an Alpha brother who respect him. It's all right, being a Beta.

Now a much more frightening possibility is worming its way out of his gut.

"Brother," Atli says, as clearly as he can. "What does a heat feel like?"

"Well, they've got wards up against that." Torgrim's voice is closer now, kneeling next to him. He's hovering like he used to do when Atli skinned his knee. Waiting for him to cry, or be a man about it, or need real grownup help. "I've never—you don't get them till you're out in the world. They keep all the Omegas away till we can all manage... manage ourselves a bit."

"Not a rut." Atli stares down at the grass and earth between his hands. "A heat. What does that feel like?"

"Well." Torgrim gives him a tentative pat on the back like he's a drunk fifth-year throwing up into the toilets. "It makes Omegas feel all hot, I reckon, and they want to get bred real hard. You have to bite them and knock them around sometimes. And get them knotted, of course."

"Right," Atli says. "In that case. That's it. That's what I'm having."

"If that's what's on your mind, I really don't think you're, you know, a _Beta_. It might be ‘cos you're so late, it's affecting you all funny."

"Brother," Atli says, more forceful this time. "I'm an Omega and I need to get fucked."

There's a pause. Atli can't bring himself to look up. Most of his brain is still capable of thinking rationally, and remembering how awful this is. Omegas don't get to go to Durmstrang. They definitely don't get to drop out of Durmstrang after fooling the whole world into giving them five and a half years here.

"Oh," his brother says, after a moment. "Well, that's good. That means it'll go in."

Atl does look up then, and sees Torgrim's robes starting to come up. His trousers are green today.

"Wait," Atli says, over the thrill that shoots up his spine, over the sheer disbelief that what's happening is something that can happen in real life. "Wait a minute. You're not talking about—"

"No, right." Torgrim licks his lips and lets his robes go. "Right, we can't. Sorry, I just was... Yeah. We can't just because it'd feel good."

Omegas don't go to Durmstrang, Atli remembers, because it's not safe. None of the Alphas here are bonded—there are laws, these days, saying they're not old enough until they leave school. And there are tests these days, because the law can't tell a castle of horny teenagers to _refrain from_ shit. Ads for the tests start to fill your mailbox after a wizarding birth, and it's a lot of work emptying them out without making a purchase. Some girl in his year had a very funny story about a cascade of paper sadly wilting out of the box when her father stamped his seal on the _Yes! Please Send Me One / Two / More??: ____ line of a certain brand's flyer. She never mentioned what her little sister turned out to be.

It's just that their family is a little more old-fashioned. The type that politely but firmly suspects those tests of watering down Alpha sperm and warping Omega wombs. There are older ways of telling a child's future, and those work just fine. So Atli never had any test, and neither did Torgrim. They played the same fighting games as kids, and they were obviously going to be the same caste. Only it turns out one of them might have done better with a test, even if they do warp your insides.

"I'll pick someone good," Torgrim says, his eyes burning holes in Atli's face—or further down, maybe— "One of our friends. He'll take good care of you, and I'll be patrolling all the time, too. It'll be my family in there, you know. Even if it's not _mine_..." He breaks off and his eyes go so dark Atli thinks they must be physically changing, not just moving in the light. "No, not one of them, they're such kids. They won't know what to do. It has to be someone we can both get on with, though."

"Do we have to pick someone now?" The thought seems to weaken Atli's legs even more. Being bonded to someone for the rest of his life, when he's barely only found out that's what's going to happen for him. He hasn't even picked a group for his Dueling practical next month.

"Atli, we can't take you back there like this, we can't let anyone smell you!" Torgrim's grip tightens on his arm. "They wouldn't let you choose. Even the teachers, I bet, the way you're smelling right now—" His gaze snaps up, suddenly, looking sharply at the sky as if watching an aroma spread through the air. "Wait it out. Out here. Or the woods, maybe. I'll bring you something to put... put in you and help with..."

One of the stones explodes suddenly, off to their right, splattering an oaky spray over its fellows that does nothing to mask the smells in the air. Atli wonders which of them that was. If there was any shrapnel, it doesn't reach them. They're cocooned in with each other in the shadow of the hill that hides them from the castle.

"Your stupid potion did this," he says. "It tasted like lake water someone pissed in."

"It was a _drink_. Listen, just get through this and we'll have someone ready for the next one. Someone good." Torgrim's other hand brushes the back of his head and then stops there. Hesitates. "It'd be me, though, wouldn't it? If you could pick and you knew you wouldn't get in trouble. If we all fought for you and I was winning, you'd be happy?"

"I don't want anyone to fight over me," Atli says miserably. "I don't want to be given away." He never thought he'd have to think about this. He hates Alphas suddenly, and he hates every Omega who's had their whole life to get used to this. Not having it all dumped on them at once at sixteen years old, too dizzy to even stand on two feet.

"It's all right," Torgrim assures him. "I'd win. I'd make sure you were—no, fuck. Shit. I don't mean to say—say these—" He exhales shakily. "Atli, I'd be _so_ careful with you. That's all I mean."

His big brother's never hurt him. Never seriously, even when they were too young to understand how to play carefully. 

"Maybe," Torgrim says, his hands warm through Atli's robes, pressing into his belly where his pants are starting to roll down beneath the robes, "maybe you'd better get away from me."

"I can't stand." He's thought about next year. His brother out in the world, forgetting to write him for another whole year. Thinking about him while the letter's in front of his face, and the whole world there once it's gone, to make him forget. Atli thinks that was what he worried about, before. And he wants so badly what the future could be, now. He can't remember clearly what the difference is between giving Torgrim up now and giving Torgrim up then.

"If you jinx me," his brother says, hands kneading nervously in place, "I won't get angry."

"I don't want to jinx you." They've done it plenty of times, as jokes. Atli doesn't think he can control any kind of spell, the way he's feeling right now.

Torgrim smells like the earth beneath them, fresh layered on ancient. Dirt the way it smells after rain, and every other kind there is. Like the oldest stones buried below them, hidden from all their shared ancestors who ever walked over them.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," he says through the smell of that earth, heavy all around. "You need a good Alpha. I want you to have someone good for you. Good to you." His fingers are twisting with nervous energy against Atli's torso, struggling not to move downward. "And oh, fuck, I want to put a baby in you. _Please_ don't let it be someone else!" His face comes down too close, smelling like heaven and looking more familiar. "I can take care of you, don't I always take good care of you? I wouldn't let anybody hurt you."

They're flat on the ground now, miming the act with their robes providing the thinnest of barriers, the line of sanity holding them back from melting into one. A miniature sun goes supernova inside Atli.

"Yeah," he says, melting. "Just you. Please." He wants his brother with him always. He wants to get stuck together in a way no one can pull apart. The weakness in his legs has been telling him to stay right here, where the right thing can happen.

They're in between the setting sun and the castle when the heat finally breaks, leaving them both shivering in the sudden coolness. It's hard to tell, but Atli's pretty sure Torgrim's been gentle with him. Nothing hurts as they walk back to the castle in the virgin darkness, and the bite is easy to cover up with some basic spellwork. Durmstrang teaches healing spells early on. He doesn't smell delicious anymore, is his brother's disappointed verdict just before they go inside.

In the torch light indoors, it doesn't matter much that he bothered covering the bite. It fits pretty well with the dirt and grass stains all over both of them. A few curious looks drift over them, but then drift away. It's hard to feel worried about anything; Atli feels as pleased with himself as Torgrim looks. But he thinks, distantly, that the smell of turf must be covering up whatever remains of his heat scent. And his brother's pheromones, he remembers. That's half the point of mating, helping the Omega cover up something that could attract danger. In bed with the dirt and grass cleaned off, he can still make out the smell of the earth, layered under all the space separating them.

* * *

"It's not just because I presented, is it?" he asks Torgrim a week later, behind a rather complicated statue of a set of horses with riders.

"What?" Torgrim says into his hair.

"That you're thinking about me so much. You keep looking. All the time," he can't help adding, wondering if he would have been so proud of that a month ago. He can feel himself glowing whenever his brother throws a jealous look across the classroom to where the sixth-years have to sit with each other.

Torgrim's hands start squeezing their way between his back and the wall, wrapping around him. "Does it matter? Fuck, you smell so good."

"It just happened so fast. I didn't think about how... I just always thought, you know, it'd be us when we were together. No hormones or anything. We'd always be in our right minds around each other."

"I'm feeling pretty fucking smart, I'll tell you that much. I think my grades are about to shoot through the roof, all the work I have to do to keep from jumping you right in class."

He's been shoving people out of the way to get over to Atli when one of their shared classes ends. That's how they got here. They both know the less-used corridors pretty well, and they're both going light on the electives in their last years at school. But it's hard to remember the exact path they took here. The darkness of his brother's eyes has started to take up a lot of space in Atli's memory.

It feels like Torgrim's eyes are always like that now when they're looking at each other. Atli wonders if he's just imagining that. He's never heard anyone talk about it. But then he's never listened very hard.

"We are going to be together," Atli asks, suddenly nervous again. "After school."

"Yeah. Yeah, don't worry. I've got a flat lined up for when I leave. You've just got to finish next year, and you can move in. I'll get it all ready for you."

Atli bursts out again, unable to stop himself. "This isn't all because I presented? You wouldn't want to be on your own, normally?"

"Don't be stupid, you were already going to have a little bed at my place. Just now it'll be my bed too." Torgrim hums happily into his neck. "I'll bet you are pregnant, you're getting all irrational. I _felt_ it take. Don't worry, you can have it over the summer and I'll bottle feed while you're at school."

"I don't know that I want you feeding my baby." Atli's pretty sure he's not pregnant, but he hasn't made it to a textbook yet to check what the signs are. "You still haven't mastered bottles, remember?"

"Maybe I'll have to use you, then." A deep growl makes Atli's heart stammer a few beats. "Keep you out of school, like the old days."

Atli thinks about lying in his brother's bed, getting used to that growl. It's a completely new sound in his world. He doesn't know how to explain something Torgrim doesn't understand, the other world where they're not bonded together. Where he's wanted still, or maybe not. He doesn't know himself why it keeps nudging at him, that things might not have been like this.

"What do I smell like?"

"It must be the sea," Torgrim says, after a moment's reflection. "Like the lake, but better."

"And my eyes." He doesn't know what color those are when he looks at his brother. "When you look in the mirror..."

"The same, they're the same as mine. Always have been. Like the sea." Torgrim laughs into his shoulder and squeezes both his hands at once. "Is that what's got you so worried? The pregnancy changes? It'll be fine. It's a beautiful process, happens to every Omega. It's all stuff the baby needs, nothing about your eyes in there. Come on now, don't turn into a worrier on top of it."

Atli doesn't know why he wants to keep worrying. Torgrim's right, it isn't like him. His brother can't forget about him, and that's good. He's never seen his own eyes when he looks at Torgrim. They could have been the color of the sea all along. A very deep, dark patch of the sea. A color you learn to love by drowning.

"Yeah," he says, turning his head down to smell the earth through his brother's hair. "You're right, it'll all be fine."


End file.
